/

Tourist arrivals at 45% of pre-Covid levels

2201 views
1 min read

Cyprus tourist arrivals for 2021 are adequate given the continued disruptions to holiday travel due to the COVID pandemic, Deputy Minister for Tourism Savvas Perdios said.

He noted that arrivals for the first ten months to October were 45% of 2019 when a record 3.97 million tourists visited Cyprus.

This year’s results are considered “satisfactory” as Cyprus has stricter coronavirus protocols than rival destinations.

It is also placed on the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) COVID red list.

Regarding October arrivals, Perdios said they are expected to reach 70% of arrivals in the same month of 2019 but stressed that per capita expenditure in 2021 has risen to €810 from €678 in 2019.

“Therefore, the rise in revenue will exceed arrivals which is a long-standing target for the Deputy Ministry.”

Perdios expects the tourism sector to continue recovering in 2022 without giving specific projections but noted that global tourism is not expected to reach the pre-covid levels until 2024.

“The aim is two-fold, which is to go better than this year and to approach the levels of 2019 as much as possible.”

Perdios made the comments when presenting the Deputy Ministry’s budget for 2022 to the House Finance and Budgetary Affairs Committee.

The budget amounts to €53.7 mln compared to the revised budget for 2021, totalling €45.7 mln.

He pointed out that 40% of the budget will be spent on digital marketing, which will be strengthened.